Nursing School: The End.

Nursing school is O V E R. 

Thats such a weird sentence to type.   I don't know how to feel about that.  If I go back and read old posts, all I wanted was the end to be here.  Now it's here and I feel...lost.  

For the past two years nursing school has consumed my life, and that's not even a little bit of an exaggeration.   All I thought about was school.  All I did was school.  My brain was full of when to study, how to study, where to study, what to study.  Class was three days a week for 8 hours a day.  Lab was once a week for 8 hours a day.  Clinical was 24 hours a week, sometimes more.   My friends were nursing students.  My text messages were about nursing, from nursing students, to nursing students, complaining about nursing school.  

Nursing.
Nursing.
Nursing.
Nursing.

For two entire years.

And now it's over.   After a million tests and a hundred billion hours of studying, it's all done.   We took our last final on Tuesday.  We signed our grades.  We withdrew from the school.  And that was all.  Our grades would be posted in a few weeks, our diploma will be sent in the mail.  No more coming back. E V E R.   

We left the building and we all sat on the grass, just looking at each other.   Like we were just dropped off into the real world.  No more instructors to watch over us, no more guidlines and rules to follow.  No more schedule or calendar or due dates.  Just real life nursing and we are here.   

As we drove away, I felt like hugging all 40 of my classmates.  Just to thank them for being my nursing class.  It's a bond that you can't replace with any other person.  No one quite understands nursing school like those in your class.  No one gets how emotionally, physically and mentally consuming nursing school is except those in your own class.   I feel connected to these people for all of forever.  These are the ones I turned to when no one else understood.  These are the ones who saw me at my best, my worst, my emotional breakdowns, my huge accomplishments, my As, my Fs, my growth, my depletion, and my transition.

...and I just drove away, maybe never seeing them again.   What a weird feeling it is.  

I can't explain how I feel.  It's a loss that doesn't make any sense.  I always thought I would be so grateful to escape that hellish place.  But, now I feel a huge hole in it's place.  I'm not sure what it is that I miss.  Maybe the class, maybe the routine, maybe the goofy-crazy-odd things nursing school does to a person.  I don't know, but it's forever gone and it won't ever come back.  

I'm grieving over a class that has changed me forever. I am the nurse I am because of the experiences I've had and I hope to never ever forget those times.  

Nursing school has my heart.
and will forever be a part of me.